8 People Reveal Their One YOLO Decision That Went Hilariously Wrong

There aren’t many feelings as exciting as the one that occurs when you throw your inhibitions to the wind and decide to try something crazy. Sometimes these risks and adventures end with a wonderful and heartwarming experience, and other times they just end with a surprising or hilarious story. In partnership with The CW’s Life Sentence starring Lucy Hale, we asked a few 20-somethings to tell us about an experience in which they tried to follow the spirit of YOLO and just ended up dealing with a hilarious mishap.

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1. “I decided to audition for a musical in college even though I had ZERO experience in music/plays/theater/anything. It was meant to just be a stupid joke (lost a bet to one of my friends). I figured I would just show up and make a fool out of myself and come out with a great story and the respect of my friends.

Turns out the theater program does open auditions where anyone can come into the theater and watch. It’s apparently this huge event twice a semester but because I had never had anything to do with the theater program, I had no idea. So I showed up to a packed house, and couldn’t back out because all my friends were there, and had to sing “Memory” from CATS (their choice). It was the most painful and embarrassing thing ever. The theater was just silent. Even my friends were embarrassed. It couldn’t have ended sooner. It’s funny now, but I was embarrassed as hell 9 years ago. I deserved it though.”

– Chase, 29

2. “When I was studying abroad in Italy, I made a close group of friends who liked to go out and party as much as possible. We’d each drink an entire bottle of wine by ourselves so we wouldn’t have to pay for drinks because we were all cheap AF and then we’d hop from club to club. One night we were all walking home wasted when a guy appeared from the shadows (like, literally) and asked us if we were interested in free alcohol. Now, I know that sounds sketchy, and it definitely was, but I guess we were all feeling pretty lucky because we took him up on the offer. He took us through a bunch of twisting alleyways and eventually we ended up at what I’m pretty sure was supposed to be a club, but it was completely empty. He took us down to the basement, which was pitch black aside from a few strobe lights, and brought us out a bottle of prosecco. We were seriously the only people in the entire place aside from the DJ.

Then suddenly, almost as if out of nowhere, a few people with bottles of neon paint appeared in front of us and started yelling at us in Italian. None of us were great at the language and the music was too loud for us to hear anything anyway, so we just kind of nodded and played along. The people started covering us with paint, smearing it all over our faces and arms and clothes and then tried to get us to dance with them. It was all really bizarre. We ended up finishing our drinks and getting out of there as fast as we could because at that point we were all convinced we were going to end up in the newspaper the next morning after being found dead in an alleyway or something. Funny enough, the club actually did make it into the papers the next day — apparently, it got shut down because of a huge outbreak of meningitis. We stopped taking free alcohol from strangers after that.”

– Callie, 23

3. “When I was 21 and going to college I went to visit a childhood friend at her school an hour away. I hung out with her and her friends all night drinking and bar hopping. While walking back to her place at 3 am, we walked by a tattoo shop and one of her friends says, ‘Oh I work here let’s go in!’ Turns out he was just the receptionist, not a tattoo artist. But YOLO, and he gave us all horrendous heart tattoos on our feet.”

4. “One time I was on this really awful, turbulent plane – like the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced. The only upside was that I was sitting next to a very attractive man. I would normally never instigate conversation, but because I was so freaked out, I figured, ‘why not, now we have something to talk about’ so I told him I hated turbulence and we just started talking and laughing. And we actually hit it off, but eventually I got so nauseous and dizzy that I had to puke. PROBLEM WAS: we weren’t allowed to get out of our seats. So I had to snatch the barf bag out of his seat (of course mine didn’t have one) and then puke my brains out for two minutes while he just sat there trying not to gag. But he got my number and now we’re dating! Just kidding, he didn’t talk to me the rest of the flight.”

– Megan, 26

5. “I wanted to impress this girl in college. She had a lot of adventurous boyfriends before me and I wanted to do something that would push the edge. So while we’re on break for the summer, I invited her to go bungee jumping with me. Not at an amusement park, but off an actual bridge deep in the mountains, organized by a few engineering students. It was maybe 150 ft drop and I went first, but after the jump, I was completely horrified, so scared I could hardly talk. Then she went and was completely unfazed. She now dates a professional stuntman and I work an office job. We’re still friends though!”

– Dan, 29

6. “My girlfriends and I went to our very first male strip club. We were expected to be entertained a la Magic Mike style. Instead, all we got were hot men in various costumes (fireman, businessman) who danced briefly and then tried to hustle us into buying lap dances the rest of the night. So not what we expected and the gender inequality is real in this one.”

7. “Last fall I decided to run a half-marathon even though I am NOT at all in shape. It was for a good cause, all my friends were doing it, and I had just graduated college so I was trying to branch out and find new ways to challenge myself. I’m not at all overweight, but just never exercise and am not in shape at all. So I thought it would be hard, but not terrible. Turns out, it WAS terrible. I had to stop in medical tents twice and they almost didn’t let me finish the race. Had to take two days off of work to recover. My friends love giving me crap about it and it is pretty funny, but also, thank God nothing terrible happened. Lesson: races are great! But do them only if you’ve trained for them!!”

– Claire, 23

8. “My friend and I were backpacking through Scandinavia and we had one day to spend in Stavanger, Norway. My friend really wanted to hike up to the Pulpit Rock, which is this cliff that’s 1,982 feet above the ground and is supposed to have this amazing view, but it was raining and we weren’t sure it was a good idea. We talked to one of the people who worked there and she assured us that people climbed up the mountain all the time in the rain and that we had nothing to worry about, and even though we were skeptical we were just like YOLO, since we knew it could be the only chance we ever had to do it. It was honestly a terrible idea on our part.

About halfway up the mountain, it started pouring and, out of nowhere, it got so cold we could see our breath. My friend also failed to mention she was terrified of heights until she was clinging to my back as we maneuvered the curves around the edges of the mountain. And then, when we did finally make it to Pulpit Rock two hours later, it was so cloudy and foggy you couldn’t see anything two feet in front of your face, so we didn’t even get the beautiful view. On the way down I slipped on the edge of the cliff and tore open my leg (and my pants) with two hours of hiking left to go. When we ~ finally ~ made it to the bottom, there was a giant red sign in front of the pathway up that warned people from hiking because it was extremely dangerous and people were known for dying on the hike during that kind of weather. We were so exhausted and the whole thing was so outrageous that we couldn’t stop laughing on the whole bus ride back to town.”

– Hannah, 22

This post was brought to you by the hilarity that ensues when Stella (Lucy Hale) gives up the #YOLO life and finds out that #Adulting is hard.